GREEN isn’t a label or a certification; it’s a state of mind that, to me, means a product is created through environmentally and socially conscious means.
When it comes to ORGANIC and NATURAL, however, it’s all about the label, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
100 PERCENT ORGANIC means that every single ingredient in the product is organically grown: No pesticides, antibiotics, chemical fertilizers, bio-engineered, synthetic growth hormones or irradiated ingredients.
CERTIFIED ORGANIC products contain at least 95 percent organically grown ingredients.
And ECO CERT also contain at least 95 percent, as certified by an independent European agency, not the USDA.
CRUELTY FREE means the product was made without animal testing. VEGAN products are not animal tested and contain no animal ingredients such as honey or milk, but they aren’t organic unless they say so.
Sadly, NATURAL is totally unregulated: It can mean that a product contains plant-derived ingredients and is cruelty- and preservative-free, but because natural is simply a descriptive, it could also mean the manufacturer just threw it on the label to make a sale.
At Mommy Greenest, I prefer to write about organic products. They’re safer for you, and for your families. If something is truly fabulous and doesn’t fit the USDA bill I might still feature it, but I won’t ever pretend it’s organic when it’s not.
That’s just plain mean, and certainly not green.
While we’re at it, here are a few other terms I tend to throw around:
CRADLE TO CRADLE, which is the concept that when you throw something away there really is no “away.”
Say, whut?
Bear with me; here’s how it works: Because the earth is a contained system, nothing that we create can really, truly be disposed of; it just becomes waste if it can’t be reused.
This idea challenges manufacturers to make products in a way that they can perpetually be reused or repurposed, therefore creating new “cradles” each time we find a new use.
This is an extremely poor paraphrasing of the 2002 book by William McDonough and Michael Braungart; if you really want to know what it’s all about, read Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, which you can buy used (hence, a new cradle) at Amazon.
Finally, just what the heck is a CARBON FOOTPRINT, anyway? In a nutshell, it’s basically a way to calculate the amount of non-renewable energy it takes to support your lifestyle. Leading climatologists say we need to reduce this kind of energy use by at least 50% to fight global warming. And though some folks dismiss everyday eco initiatives like buying green ‘bulbs and hybrid cars as a mere drop in one heck of a bucket, others agree that if we all take action in our daily lives, these drops can add up to a flood.
So if you drive a gigantic car and leave your lights on all day, your carbon footprint would be calculated somewhere along the lines of an Ugg boot. But if you’re an eco-obsessive who bikes everywhere and burns soy candles to light your home, your carbon footprint would look, well, virtually nonexistent.
Most of us fall somewhere in between. But most carbon calculators don’t take into account that the daily decisions we make every day can reduce our carbon footprints. They don’t care that you buy BPA-free bottles and organic food. But these things count!
Let’s just take meat as an example. Livestock produce methane, which is a major greenhouse gas that some experts say contributes more to global warming than cars. “You can’t be an environmentalist and eat meat,” is a PETA-popular phrase. According to information presented at the Copenhagen Climate Congress, if all of us became “weekday vegetarians,” we could reduce the costs of fighting global warming 70 percent. That’s a pretty big bucket to throw at the problem.
Not to scare you or anything, but we absorb 60 percent of what we put onto our skin. With that in mind, flip over your favorite concealer and take a look at the laundry list of unpronounceable ingredients that are, essentially, going directly into your body where they potentially interact with the hundreds of other chemicals contained in the plethora of beauty products that you slather on each day.
The problem gets even bigger when you realize that our beauty products don’t just stop at our skin: They wash down the drain, into the water system and up the food chain. That means that fish you’re eating could contain the same chemicals you (or your neighbor) sudsed up with. Given that eco-friendly products perform as well as, or better than, their conventional counterparts, maybe it’s time beauty got a green makeover.
Oh, and while I’m on the fashion and beauty tip, ORGANIC COTTON is just as soft and durable as conventional, but it doesn’t require two-thirds of a pound of pesticide to make one pair of jeans. BAMBOO is the world’s fastest-growing plant; bamboo fabric is sustainably grown, completely biodegradable, naturally pest- and insect-resistant, absorbs 400% more greenhouse gases and produces 35% more oxygen than trees (say that 10 times fast and we’ll give you a quarter), but should be mechanically processed to be truly sustainable. TENCEL fabric is organically produced from sustainably harvested wood pulp. HEMP is naturally insect-resistant, anti-microbial and requires no herbicides, pesticides or chemical fertilizers to produce. Think about this: If the 1.4 billion t-shirts sold in American each year were replaced with hemp tees, the energy savings would equal 3.5 billion gigajoules and the water savings would equal 1.3 trillion gallons—enough water for half the U.S. population for an entire year.
P.S. Want more specifics? Take a look at The Big List of Things That Suck, on our sister site EcoStiletto. Good times, people. Good times.
Mommy Greenest is not about guilt; it’s about information. It’s not about forcing you to change; it’s about giving you alternatives. Because everyone wants to make a difference, but no one wants to give up the little things that we love. Making a difference doesn’t have to mean making a huge change in your lifestyle. Sometimes it just means considering the alternatives.
